Layer 458 . . . Empathy, Social Intelligence, Human Cruelty, and the World's Most Valuable Resource

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The obvious reason the rich don't give a shit about the poor is they're greedy bastards who can never get their hands on enough moola to satisfy their grasping, materialistic, status-seeking, pleasure-seeking desires.

Another reason is their total lack of caring, empathy, social intelligence - call it what you will.

The science of empathy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/mar/27/the-science-of-empathy

Does it upset you when you see people arguing? Do you cry at the cinema? Empathy is one of our most powerful emotions yet society has all but ignored it. Autism expert Professor Simon Baron-Cohen reveals the science behind "the world's most valuable resource" – and how its lack is the root of human cruelty

This article was published in last week's Guardian magazine, and is a must-read for anyone who has any interest in human relationships - which ought to be everybody. If this doesn't appeal - then it means you're a sociopath or a psychopath.

It's interesting that the professor never uses the term "social intelligence", though he must be aware that Daniel Goleman, for one, has written whole books on this subject, and on emotional intelligence.

Bear in mind also that he's writing from the standpoint of a professional academic psychologist focusing on people with a deficit of empathy, people who have a serious lack of empathy for deep-seated personal reasons, and not just because their social intelligence hasn't been encouraged or allowed to develop by a school system that doesn't give a damn, on the whole, about consistently raising young people's levels of social intelligence. In fact, competitive education will always do the opposite - depress levels of social intelligence by setting people against one another through competition for grades and status.

As ever, I'll post here a few quotations from the article just to give a flavour, but I do urge readers to take time to read the entire piece.

How can humans treat other people as objects? How do humans come to switch off their natural feelings of sympathy for a fellow human being who is suffering?

As a scientist I want to understand the factors causing people to treat others as if they are mere objects. So let's substitute the term "evil" with the term "empathy erosion". Empathy erosion can arise because of corrosive emotions, such as bitter resentment, or desire for revenge, or blind hatred, or desire to protect.

The key idea is that we all lie somewhere on an empathy spectrum. People said to be "evil" or cruel are simply at one extreme of the empathy spectrum. We can all be lined up along this spectrum of individual differences, based on how much empathy we have. At one end of this spectrum we find "zero degrees of empathy".

Zero degrees of empathy means you have no awareness of how you come across to others, how to interact with others, or how to anticipate their feelings or reactions. It leaves you feeling mystified by why relationships don't work out, and it creates a deep-seated self-centredness. Other people's thoughts and feelings are just off your radar. It leaves you doomed to do your own thing, in your own little bubble, not just oblivious of other people's feelings and thoughts but oblivious to the idea that there might even be other points of view. The consequence is that you believe 100% in the rightness of your own ideas and beliefs, and judge anyone who does not hold your beliefs as wrong, or stupid.

Zero degrees of empathy does not strike at random in the population. There are at least three well-defined routes to getting to this end-point: borderline, psychopathic, and borderline personality disorders. I group these as zero-negative because they have nothing positive to recommend them. They are unequivocally bad for the sufferer and for those around them. Of course these are not all the sub-types that exist. Indeed, alcohol, fatigue and depression are just a few examples of states that can temporarily reduce one's empathy, and schizophrenia is another example of a medical condition that can reduce one's empathy.

Empathy itself is the most valuable resource in our world. Given this assertion, it is puzzling that in the school curriculum empathy figures hardly at all, and in politics, business, the courts or policing it is rarely if ever on the agenda. We can see examples among our political leaders of the value of empathy, as when Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk sought to understand and befriend each other, crossing the divide in Apartheid South Africa, but the same has not yet been achieved between Israel and Palestine, or between Washington and Iraq or Afghanistan. And, for every day that empathy is not employed in such corners of the world, more lives are lost.

I think we have taken empathy for granted, and thus to some extent overlooked it. Psychology as a science virtually ignored it for a century. Educators focusing on literacy and mathematics have also largely ignored it. We just assume empathy will develop in every child, come what may. We put little time, effort or money into nurturing it. Our politicians almost never mention it, despite the fact that they need it more than anyone. Until recently, neuroscientists hardly questioned what empathy is.

Empathy is like a universal solvent. Any problem immersed in empathy becomes soluble. It is effective as a way of anticipating and resolving interpersonal problems, whether this is a marital conflict, an international conflict, a problem at work, difficulties in a friendship, political deadlocks, a family dispute, or a problem with the neighbour. Unlike the arms industry that costs trillions of dollars to maintain, or the prison service and legal system that cost millions of dollars to keep oiled, empathy is free. And, unlike religion, empathy cannot, by definition, oppress anyone.

Zero Degrees of Empathy: a New Theory of Human Cruelty by Simon Baron-Cohen (Allen Lane, £20) is published on 7 April.

Simon Baron-Cohen is professor of psychology and psychiatry at Cambridge university

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Layer 325 . . . Empathy, Social and Spiritual Intelligence, Saving the World, Enlightenment, Matt Harvey and Ben Howard

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Matt Harvey's a poet who used to be a regular on Radio 4's Saturday Live. The poems he's written for the programme can still be seen on its website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/saturdaylive/mattharvey.shtml

It's difficult to choose favourites - all of them are gems.

I saw Matt performing live for the first time on Saturday evening, and he was well worth missing the England game for. For me the best part of the show was his performance of Empath Man - a contemporary superhero he's created who tackles crimes and emergencies by using his "advanced listening skills and his ability to stay open and vulnerable in tight situations . . ."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkUGS2Hj1i0 - Empath Man
http://www.youtube.com/user/wondermentalist

Website - http://www.mattharvey.co.uk/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zyu6-_qCvo&feature=related - Torquay Boys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q90_phxAOk&NR=1 - on Transition Towns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGIIXG5rWjQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZjt5NnDe7A&feature=related  -  Buying Curtains

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The point of mentioning the above, before I got carried away by memories of Matt's performance, is the importance of empathy and social intelligence. It's something Oxzen has gone into previously, over a year ago -

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/05/layer-162-social-intelligence-and.html

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/08/layer-183-grace-character-basics-all.html  -  A Force To Be Reckoned With

In yesterday's Guardian Madeleine Bunting wrote another excellent article on Big Issues - Empathy and Enlightenment:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/13/21st-century-enlightenment-revolution-mind

Can empathy save us?

We need to live very differently, argues a bold new text. And that calls for nothing less than a revolution of the mind

Hail the 21st-century Enlightenment. Ideas don't come much bigger

It makes a change to lift eyes from the detail of coalition agreements or the chances in the World Cup and take on board an analysis of the grand sweep of human history, new scientific insights into human nature, and how we can ensure our survival. This is the territory explored in a pamphlet calling for a "21st-century Enlightenment" to be published this week.

http://www.thersa.org/events/our-events/21st-century-enlightenment

[As I write this I'm half-listening to a programme I'm recording from BBC-HD called 'Wild China', part of which  focuses on Tibetan Buddhism and its concern with enlightenment . . . ]

It's an intriguing set of ideas pulled together by Matthew Taylor, in part to sketch out what an institution founded in the 18th-century Enlightenment [the RSA] ought to be doing – the answer being to generate the 21st-century Enlightenment, and this is now the new strapline for the Royal Society of Arts. No small ambition here.

The questions that underlie Taylor's pamphlet are echoed in the soul-searching around Labour's defeat: what do words such as liberal or progressive mean, and what kind of politics do they require?

"Progress in human knowledge and culture" is the slogan emblazoned round the RSA's auditorium. But can we still have faith in an idea of progress when the very inventions and ways of life that were thought would bring it about – market capitalism and individual freedom – are wreaking unprecedented environmental destruction?

We need to live very differently, and that requires thinking very differently. What's required is another revolution of the mind, a paradigm shift in human consciousness.

This is where [Taylor] becomes quietly optimistic. He believes this is possible to achieve – though not easy. The first source of his optimism lies in the research emerging from fields such as neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, showing how deeply social our brains are. The perception of us as sovereign individuals, making independent and rational decisions, is a delusion; we are profoundly influenced by those around us, and prey to emotions which we only partly understand.

Just as the scientific insights of the 17th century led to the Enlightenment's profound shifts in the understanding of the individual, and the idea that the social order could and should be changed, so Taylor hopes science can prompt dramatic shifts in self-awareness, in how we understand human behaviour so that we replace individualism with more socially connected relationships of solidarity.

The second source of his optimism relies on heavy borrowing from the recently published The Empathic Civilisation, in which Jeremy Rifkin argued that history is marked by human beings' increasing empathy for others – which can be briefly summarised as from family to tribe to nation. The question is whether our capacity for empathy can expand to the human species, the globe and the biosphere in time to prevent the destruction of the environmental resources on which we depend. Empathy can save us, believes Taylor; it is vital to negotiations on how we share out natural resources, and vital to ensure harmonious co-existence on a crowded planet. But he acknowledges: "There are reasons to ask whether the process of widening human empathy has stalled, and just at the time we need to accelerate it."

If it has stalled in Britain, and it clearly has, it's in no small measure due to the changes in classroom practice in places like England, where teaching, in many of our schools, has again become a business of teacher-centred cramming for tests instead of a child-centred process which allows pupils to interact and collaborate in their learning so that their social and emotional intelligences are allowed and encouraged to develop.

But what of spiritual intelligence? Bunting goes on to say this:

The third element essential to the 21st-century Enlightenment is a "reassertion of the fundamentally ethical dimension of humanism", argues Taylor. What kind of human beings we want to be, what kind of society we want, are always ethical questions, he insists. Again, he cites scientific research that shows how deeply rooted ethical understanding is in the human brain.

Ethical reasoning and debate need to be resurrected. We need an ethics that challenges the dominant logics of market, bureaucracy, and scientific and technological development. Just because something will sell doesn't mean it should be sold; just because something can be discovered and developed doesn't mean it should be – now so painfully evident in the Gulf of Mexico disaster. It's a powerful, urgent argument.

Does this amount to a credible account of the possibility of future human progress? Although intrigued, I'm sceptical of the claims made for empathy, and anxious that arguments for ethics may fail to gain traction.

"Intrigued"? I find this conclusion very strange, and out of keeping with the whole tone of this piece. You have to wonder whether Madeleine has actually read Daniel Goleman's books on social intelligence and emotional intelligence? If so, what the hell is there to disagree with there? It's not a question of "making claims" for empathy. It exists. Without it we can't begin to develop what Buddhists call lovingkindness.

Has she read anything by the Dalai Lama, or anything on Buddhist Ethics? Is she even aware of the concept of spiritual intelligence? If even our leading journalists and intellectuals are lacking in such fundamental forms of understanding, then what hope is there for us becoming a more enlightened society?

Without emotional, social and spiritual intelligence there can be no enlightenment. Without enlightenment there can be little human progress. Without an education system that enables young people to develop these key intelligences, as well as creativity and imagination, we have no prospect of becoming a more enlightened society.

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Ben Howard

Ben Howard apparently dropped out of a journalism degree in order to pursue a career as a singer, musician and composer. He shared a gig last weekend with fellow Totnesian Matt Harvey, and played a great acoustic set in Dartmouth in company with a double bass player and a cellist (India Bourne) who also sang backing vocals.

Ben's a young guy who's rapidly maturing as an artist, as can be seen by a number of videos and audios on sites like YouTube. The quality of the vocal harmonies and musical arrangements, as well as the playing, seems to go up in leaps and bounds. None of what's currently on the Internet is as good as what he's currently doing, but it's worth checking out all the same, and it's well worth trying to see him play live.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPfhqTUkPgU&feature=related - These Waters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPpgeF1SV4s&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew7jafO9JOs&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efilu1CVVAk&feature=related
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Layer 250 . . . Citizen Ethics

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It shouldn't really make any difference which actual number is used to differentiate one blog or piece of writing from another - none has any real significance, except maybe the first and the last. All the same, a quarter century of unintended writing seems like some kind of milestone.

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I realise I haven't finished - nowhere near finished - my "stocktaking" of the events of 2009, but I shall come back to it, and it will be finished. Eventually.

After 250 blogs it might be an idea to re-think whether there's any real purpose in this kind of writing, and whether the apparent purpose really serves any purpose, or whether the purpose ought be re-thought, re-established, and reconfigured.

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This blog's about taking stock of our current moral and political philosophy, our guiding ethics, our political process, our sense of purpose in the world, social justice, emotional and spiritual intelligence, social responsibility and empathy, citizenship, moral engagement, inequality, our economic system and what we mean by living a good life.

Oxzen may not have too much to say about such matters, but Oxzen recognises that these matters actually matter, that they affect people's lives, and that the good writing that's published elsewhere about them deserves to be recognised, widely disseminated, brought to people's attention, and seriously considered.

My main purpose in highlighting and drawing attention to what others have written about these matters, however, is for my own benefit - so that I have points of reference, milestones and signposts to return to, to chart my home territory, to remind me of the way to go whenever disorientation sets in or memory fails.

Yesterday The Guardian, in association with Citizen Ethics Network, published a supplement called Citizen Ethics. I think everyone should take some time to read the document that's available to be downloaded in PDF format from this website -

http://www.citizenethics.org.uk/

http://www.citizenethics.org.uk/About+Us

You can also get it on the Guardian website, as well as download it from there -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/20/citizen-ethics-time-of-crisis

As ever, I'd like to summarise and to promote it with a few snippets:

We Need A Public Life With Purpose

By Michael Sandel

As frustration with politics builds . . . we must seize the chance to explore a new politics of the common good.

How can we achieve a just society?

Today, most of our political arguments revolve around welfare and freedom - increasing economic output and respecting people's rights. But a just society requires something more: reasoning together about the meaning of the good life.

Whether we're arguing about financial bailouts and bankers' bonuses, or the growing gap between rich and poor, or how to contend with the environmental costs of economic growth, questions of justice are bound up with competing notions of civic virtue and the common good.

In 2008, Barack Obama tapped Americans' hunger for a public life of larger purpose and articulated a politics of moral and spiritual aspiration.

As frustration with politics builds on both sides of the Atlantic, it is worth asking what a new politics of the common good might look like. Here are four possible themes:

1. Citizenship, sacrifice and service.

2. The moral limits of markets.

3. Inequality, solidarity, civic virtue.

4. A politics of moral engagement.

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Part One

How do we decide our values?
How do we cultivate virtue?

Empathy, not individuality, is the key to humanity.
By Rowan Williams.

It is the extra things that make us human.

We learn this as children through fantasy and play. We keep it alive as adults through all sorts of "unproductive" activity, from sport to poetry.

This is closely connected with understanding and sympathy with others.  

This is a moment when every possible agency in civil society needs to reinforce its commitment to a world where thoughtful empathy is a normal aspect of the mature man or woman.

As for the character of human mutuality, this connects for me with the (Christian) belief that if someone else is damaged, frustrated, offended or oppressed, everyone's humanity is diminished.

We need to be able, in the political and economic context, to spell out what our commitments are and why, and what kind of human character we want to see.

Politics left to managers, and economics left to brokers, add up to a recipe for social and environmental chaos, and threaten the possibilities for full humanity.

It necessitates the the cultivation of virtue . . . the qualities of human behavior that make us more than reactive and self-protective - courage, foresight, self-critical awareness and concern for balanced universal welfare, which, under various names, have been part of the vocabulary of European ethics for 2,500 years.

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Courage, modesty and wakefulness
By Philip Pullman

I want to praise virtue, and say why a nation, as well as an individual, needs to be virtuous.

When it comes to public virtue, William Blake's great poem Auguries of Innocence reminds us that the personal and the political, the small and the great, are one:

A dog starv'd at his Master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A Horse misus'd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood . . .
The Whore and Gambler, by the State
Licens'd, build that Nation's Fate.

Are there any virtues in particular that ought to characterise a good state? I can think of three to start with.

The first is courage. Courage is foundational: it's what we need to do so as to be able to act kindly even when we're afraid, in order to exercise good and steady judgment even in the midst of confusion and panic.

A courageous nation would not be afraid of its own newspapers, for example, or toady to their proprietors; it would continue to do right even when loud voices were urging it to do wrong.

The second virtue I want to praise is modesty.

The third virtue I'd like to see in a nation is intellectual curiosity, a proper regard for history and for the arts and the sciences: wakefulness, in a word.

Such a nation would be active and enquiring of mind, quick to perceive and compare and consider; it would know at once when a government tried to interfere with its freedoms . . . and an attack on any of them would feel like a personal affront.

I saw [an example] recently of public virtue at work. [It was on] a television programme about the work Michael Rosen did not long ago in a school in South Wales where books had been undervalued. He showed everyone the profound value of reading and all it could do to enrich their lives, and he did so not by following curriculum guidelines and aiming at targets and putting children through tests, but by beginning with delight.

Delight is like a canary in a coal mine: while it sings we know that the great public virtue of liberty is still alive. A nation whose laws express fear and suspicion and hostility cannot sustain delight for very long. If joy goes, freedom is in danger. A nation that was brave, and modest, and curious would understand that, and would never forget the value of telling its children stories.
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Layer 198 . . . Mansfield, Empathy, Duncan Smith, Work, Benefits, and Happiness

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Mansfield, Identity and Empathy

What makes an outstanding individual? (see also blog on Maslow - Layer 20  Fully Evolved Human Beings)

Michael Mansfield QC on Radio 4's Midweek today was promoting his autobiography and talking about the need to 'identify' with the people he's representing in court, as Libby Purves put it. He spoke about 'being able to get inside someone's skin”. Actually this isn't identification – it's empathy. You can empathise with someone who may be a completely different sort of character, living a completely different lifestyle, with very different attitudes and behavior, without needing to feel any sense of common identity, providing you have the ability to imagine what it might be like to be that person and providing you can understand why and how they do things.

Words are very precise, and we ought to make an effort to use them properly.

Empathy is the essential component of social intelligence – the ability to relate to others, to understand their feelings and motives, and to form positive relationships. Mansfield is highly successful in what he does, partly because he's able to make positive relationships with his clients, partly because he is able to empathise with them, partly because he has a strong sense of compassion, and partly because he has a burning desire to see justice done, and to make sure it's seen to be done.

He's also an effective, persuasive, convincing and fearless communicator. It's a powerful combination of social and spiritual intelligence that makes Mansfield outstanding in his field. No-one doubts he also has a very clear grasp of the complexities of the law, and all the professional knowledge that goes with the territory, plus first-class thinking skills and powers of analysis. But no-one even knows or cares about how successful he was academically. Education policy makers please note.

http://www.city.ac.uk/whatson/2009/9_sep/100909_mansfield.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/michael-mansfield-meet-britainrsquos-boldest-barrister-821976.html
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article6818799.ece
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Mansfield


The Quiet Man, Empathy and Social Justice

"On 7 December 2005, Ian Duncan Smith was appointed Chairman of the Social Justice Policy Group which was facilitated by the Centre for Social Justice. The group's aim was to "study the causes and consequences of poverty in Britain and seek practical ideas to empower the least well-off."

There was an amazing interview with Ian Duncan Smith in the 8.10 slot on the Today programme on R4 this morning, in which he talked convincingly with passion and conviction about the need to invest more money in the process of getting unemployed people into work. His point was that there's a tipping point that arises when someone is considering taking on a job and declaring earnings, since the system as it stands allows people to take home virtually no more when they take on a low-paid job than when they were unemployed but free and time rich. What does it take to make people go beyond the tipping point? At least that's my interpretation of what he was saying.

I've been thinking about this very thing for some time now. Our stupid politicians say they're desperate to get the unemployed into the habit of paid work, but they totally fail to take into account, and to factor into the equation, the loss of freedom and the reduction of time for personal and family pursuits when someone takes on a poorly paid and possibly boring job. Those things are actually worth something to the unemployed, and must be taken into account.

The answer therefore, if I heard IDS correctly, is to not ìmmediately reduce all of a claimant's benefits when they start work, so that their income becomes significantly boosted even when they're working for a minimum wage rate. I can hardly believe I heard a Tory saying this. I must go immediately and look this up on the internet, assuming IDS has published these thoughts elsewhere.

My own solution is along slightly different lines. When someone takes on a new job, especially if it's a dull and poorly paid job, neither the worker nor the employer knows whether they're going to be suitable and successful in the job, and during that period of uncertainty, when both are making up their minds whether the employment is going to be long-term, the benefits the individual has been receiving should not be cut. Neither should the new earner be taxed at the standard rate. There should either be a period of exemption from tax or the tax should be at 10% of earnings.

After a suitable transition period the new employee would lose the benefits income, since you can't expect double bubble indefinitely. By that time, though, relationships in the workplace will have been established, job prospects checked out, new workmates become pals, and the habit of getting up in the morning and commuting acquired. When faced with the financial, social, emotional and spiritual benefits of the new lifestyle versus returning to the old one, the vast majority are going to opt to stay in the job and not go back on unemployment and jobseeker benefits.

In a sense we'd be rewarding the unemployed just for making the effort to go out and start work, for giving up time for themselves, and for getting into the work habit – and why not? As things stand there's very little in the way or incentives or rewards for giving up one's liberty and taking on crappy, low status, poorly paid jobs, ie becoming a wage slave.

Faced with a choice of being a wage slave (and a very poorly paid wage slave), and a dropout, is it so surprising that so many choose to just drop out? Especially if they can make some money by ducking and diving. We clearly need to pay people to give up ducking and diving, or being a drug user, or being a slacker and a slob, or someone who just can't face the hassle of 'signing off' and losing benefits when they suspect they might be very quickly back on them but having to face a period of no income whatsoever whilst a new claim is processed.

I suspect very few politicians have bothered to look very closely at the predicaments and the lifestyles of the poor and the unemployed, let alone feel able to empathise with them, so respect! to IDS for spending time thinking of ways to actually help such people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Duncan_Smith

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_Social_Justice

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/sep/03/conservatives.uk

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Sarkozy and the Quality of Life

"A great revolution is waiting for us," [Sarkozy] said. "For years, people said that finance was a formidable creator of wealth, only to discover one day that it accumulated so many risks that the world almost plunged into chaos."

"The crisis doesn't only make us free to imagine other models, another future, another world. It obliges us to do so," he said.

Measuring well-being would make France's economy, famous for its short workweek and generous social benefits, look more rosy.

"If leisure has no accounting value because it's essentially full of non-market activities like sport or culture, we put productivity below human fulfillment," Sarkozy said.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2009/09/14/2009-09-14_president_nicolas_sarkozy_wants_happiness_used_as_economic_indicator.html

It was interesting that Keith Floyd, as a bon viveur, and having written a brilliant book on French cuisine, bought a house in France and chose to spend a lot of his time there.

"Endorsing the recommendations of a report given to him by Nobel prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, Sarkozy said governments should do away with the "religion of statistics" in which financial prowess was the sole indicator of a country's [or an individual's!] state of health.

"For years statistics have registered an increasingly strong economic growth as a victory over shoperation and Development. "We need better measures of people's expectations and levels of satisfaction, of how they spend their time, of their relations with other people in their community."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/14/sarkozy-attacks-gdp-focus

http://www.canada.com/Sarkozy+looks+bright+side+life/1995470/story.html

http://www2.canada.com/nanaimodailynews/news/story.html?id=1992519

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jD5xKXpv1EwzOwaST9Hphv8GD0AQ

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/09/15/sarkozy-wants-the-french-to-pursue-more-happiness.aspx

Layard and the Greatest Good – Tackling the Happiness Question 

Lord Layard is at it again this week:

"What is progress? That is the question President Sarkozy of France has posed to a distinguished commission. It is exactly the right question, and the future of our culture depends on the answer.

GDP is not the answer, and the Stiglitz commission – whose report, What is Social Progress?, is published today – is clear about that: progress must be measured by the overall quality of people's lives. At this point the commission identifies two possible approaches. One is to focus on how people feel: are they happy and contented? (This idea goes back to philosophers of the Enlightenment, such as Jeremy Bentham.)

The other is to focus on people's objective circumstances: do they have the capabilities (as Amartya Sen calls them) that are conducive to human flourishing? The commission does not choose between these approaches, and both are infinitely superior to GDP. But it matters greatly which way we choose.

It would obviously be convenient if we could identify one overarching good and, together with many Enlightenment philosophers, I believe that good is happiness.

There are many things that are highly desirable: health, freedom, love, and so on. But if we ask why they matter, we can have a discussion: if you are ill, you feel bad. The same if you are enslaved or unloved; it makes you unhappy. But if we ask why it matters if you feel bad and unhappy, there is no answer. It is self-evident.

So it is time to reassert the noble philosophy of the Enlightenment. In this view, every human being wants to be happy, and everybody counts equally. It follows that progress is measured by the overall scale of human happiness and misery. And the right action is the one that produces the greatest happiness in the world and (especially) the least misery. I can think of no nobler ideal.

So I propose a campaign for the Principle of the Greatest Happiness. This says that I should aim to produce the most happiness I can in the world and, above all, the least misery. And my rulers should do the same. This principle would lead to better private lives and better public policy. We desperately need a social norm in which the good of others figures more prominently in our personal goals. Today's excessive individualism removes so much of the joy from family life, work and even friendship."

I can't be bothered at this point to go over again the arguments in favour of making Zen enlightenment (as opposed to 'Enlightenment' enlightenment) our goal, and not the pursuit of happiness.

I'll just say this – people pursue money and material things because they believe those things will make them happy. Governments pursue the generation of money and the production of goods because they believe people need lots more of those things in order to be happy. It all depends on what you think is going to make you, and other people, happy. Chasing after happiness is dumb behaviour. There – I've said it.

Still, Layard's thing is 'happiness' – and it's his hobby horse, his political franchise. No point in arguing with him.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/13/happiness-enlightenment-economics-philosophy


Stiglitz and Wall Street

Nobel prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote an excellent piece this week, on the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse. It's worth taking time to read it in full.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/14/lehmans-one-year-after1

What went wrong? Have the right lessons been learned? I fear that our collective response has been mistaken and inadequate – that we may just have made matters worse.

Lehmans was . . . a consequence of flawed lending practices, and of inadequate oversight by regulators.

Bailing out the US banks need not have meant bailing out the bankers, their shareholders, and bondholders. We could have kept the banks as ongoing institutions, even if we had played by the ordinary rules of capitalism which say that when a firm can't meet its obligations to creditors, the shareholders lose everything.

Unquestionably we should not have allowed banks to become so big and so intertwined that their failure would cause a crisis.

[Our government] has failed to take adequate steps to restrict institutions' size, their risk-taking, and their interconnectedness. Indeed, it has allowed the big banks to become even bigger – just as it has failed to stem the flow of profligate executive bonuses.

After the fall of Bear Stearns, with rumours that Lehmans was next, the Fed and the Treasury should have done a serious job of figuring out how to manage an orderly shutdown of a large, complex institution; and if they determined that they lacked adequate legal authority, they should have requested it.

They appear, remarkably, to have been repeatedly caught off-guard.

After saying that they did not want to bail out Lehmans because of a concern about moral hazard, they extended the government's safety net further than it had ever been. Bear Stearns extended it to investment banks, and AIG to all financial institutions. Perhaps they were doing the best they could at the time; but that is no excuse for not having anticipated the problems and been better prepared.

Lehman Brothers was a symptom of a dysfunctional financial system and regulatory failure. It should have taught us that preventing problems is easier, and certainly less costly, than dealing with them when they become virtually intractable.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/14/lehmans-one-year-after1

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Carter – Obama – Racism

"The former US president Jimmy Carter has condemned as "dastardly" and "based on racism" a southern Republican's outburst during Barack Obama's big healthcare speech to Congress last week. Carter said the "You lie" interjection by Joe Wilson showed there was "an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president".

The 84-year-old said the case was part of a disturbing trend directed at Obama that has included equating the president to Nazi leaders. "Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national programme on healthcare. It's deeper than that."

In an interview with NBC News, Carter attributed much of the conservative opposition to Obama to his race. "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man.”

Dick Harpootlian, a former Democrat party chairman in South Carolina, said he did not believe Wilson was motivated by racism but added that his actions encouraged racist views. "I think Joe's conduct was asinine, but I think it would be asinine no matter what the colour of the president." Harpootlian, who has known Wilson for decades, said: "I don't think Joe's outburst was caused by President Obama being African-American. I think it was caused by no filter being between his brain and his mouth."

Surely they're both correct in their assessments.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/16/jimmy-carter-you-lie-racist

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Interesting comment on the Guardian film blog on David Lynch:

“There are too few living directors out there who can successfully translate the craziness inside their heads into compelling movie-making. Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang still inspire devotion from beyond the grave. Lynch, at 65, is only getting started.

Which is why it worries me that he's so stuck on meditation. I don't want his silence. I want his noise. So if anyone out there finds his voice, could you please hand it in?”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/sep/10/david-lynch-tribute-films-art


Chavez and South America

“I would be worried if they spoke well of me.”

Hugo Chavez –  Oliver Stone - South of the Border

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/sep/03/oliver-stone-south-of-the-border-hugo-chavez

Retirement

Max Mosley shared some interesting thoughts in an interview with Donald McCrae in the Guardian yesterday. He's agreed to stand down from the presidency of the FIA and his leading role in F1 at the end of this season, after being put under huge pressure by the F1 teams to do so, following the revelations in the New of the Screws about his sex life in S & M cellars and dungeons. (has anyone turned it into a Playstation game yet – Dungeons and Dragracers?)

He's a fascinating guy, and you have to say very gutsy (and wealthy) to fight back against the Screws and win his right to privacy case. His family background is unbelievable – Oswald and Diana Mosley as parents, involvement in his father's post-war Union Movement (successor to the British Union of Fascists) from an early age, and the loss of his only child, Alexander, from a drugs overdose, just a few months ago.

In the paper he's quoted as saying,

“Retirement will be a big relief. The work is absolutely non-stop and I always feel I haven't really done what I should've done. And I am tired of the battling. It's more or less, in different guises, the same problems with the same people and you're never going to finish. At a certain point it's time to stop. You've only got a limited amount of time left before you drop off – and do you really want to spend it solving other people's problems?"

“I'm dying to have a bit more time for myself. There are so many books I want to read and maybe I will write a book myself – because there is so much to tell."

That could be a book worth reading. I seem to be developing a strange regard for high-profile right-wing characters – IDS, Sarkozy, etc. Worrying.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/sep/15/max-mosley-formula-one-fia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Mosley

Today's musical treat, for no particular reason, is Seasick Steve:

http://www.foxytunes.com/artist/seasick_steve

click on the 'Live on Jules Holland' video. Doghouse Blues Boogie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUzmZvwMNsw&feature=related

This version is probably even better, apart from the quality of sound on the voice PA.

Steve decided at the age of fourteen that the quality of life he had at home was so piss poor he'd do better to hit the road and go out on his own. There's never been a lot of money in playing the blues and boogie, unless you get very lucky. Steve's been materially poor most of his life, but rich in spirit and attitude.

Taoist Thought for Today:

Free of self-focused expectations, one is free of disappointment.
Free of self-focused motivation, one is free of regrets.

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Layer 194 . . . Fair Play, Delights and Rapport

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Fair Play

It's not often when you watch a live football match on TV that you experience a moment of sheer joy that has you yelling out or jumping up in ecstatic amazement and excitement - and this goes for whichever team you support (as if sitting on a sofa constitutes support!), or whatever match you're watching. Those moments of terrific surprise and delight when somebody or some team does something so beautifully and so unexpectedly that it sends a shock through your nervous system so as to cause an involuntary spasm of shouting, cheering and swearing – such moments tend to be very few and far between, especially if you're English and you enjoy football.

To have it happen three times, then, in a match - and what's even more amazing, in a match involving England - is a rare treat. To see an England team completely dominate and outplay another team ranked in the world's top 10 is – well, unknown. Almost. I won't forget the 5 – 1 thrashing of Germany, in Germany. And so it was when England defeated Croatia 5 – 1 at Wembley last night, and in doing so qualified for the finals of the World Cup in South Africa next year. Job done. Capello 8 – Others 0.

What a guy. Talk about emotionally intelligent! He doesn't fake or exaggerate excitement, or anger, or disgust, or frustration – and if he feels those things he doesn't necessarily try to stop himself from showing small signs of them either. What you see is what you get, and what we have is a team manager who's a real man – a mensch – who can keep a check on his dominant emotions without completely covering them up or denying they exist.

According to Leo Rosten, the author of The Joys of Yiddish, a mensch is “a person of integrity and honor, someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being “a real mensch” is nothing less than character, rectitude, dignity, and a sense of what is right, responsible, and decorous”.

Capello's a three-dimensional human being who's a thinker and a planner, a plotter and an analyst, a calculator and a strategist, as well as someone who knows how to relate to the people he's leading and managing, both as professionals and as human beings. He has intellect, plus emotional, social and spiritual intelligence, in abundance and in harmony, in contrast to every dork of an England manager you can possibly remember, with the honourable exceptions of Bobby Robson, dearly departed, and maybe Ron Greenwood and Alf Ramsey.

He doesn't try to be overly pally with them, like the Rain Man - the Wally with the Brolly - who shall remain nameless, who so shamefully and so spectacularly fucked up on the job, finally crashing and burning in a corresponding fixture with Croatia two years ago, a game that England unbelievably lost 2 - 3 at Wembley.

Capello is polite, and courteous, and professionally distant, as he should be. But he also knows how to coach, how to explain things, how to empathise, how to enthuse, and how to motivate. But not in a gung-ho up-and-at-em ridiculous pumped-up adrenaline-rush kind of a Keegan or (ahem) 'Turnip' Tayloresque way. (I still have to smile to myself whenever I remember dear Graham's little gems – Do I Not Like That!, You've Just Cost Me My Job!, etc)

http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/quotes/sport/graham_taylor
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/graham_taylor.html

“Very few of us have any idea whatsoever of what life is like living in a goldfish bowl, except, of course, for those of us who are goldfish.”
No – forget I said smile - laugh uproariously out loud.

Two of the goals last night gave a quiet little buzz of pleasure – when Lennon jinked his way through to a penalty and Lampard efficiently slotted his kick, and when Rooney also unspectacularly threaded the ball past the goalkeeper after the hapless chap had dreadfully mis-kicked to our unmarked striker. (A real shame for the poor goalie – his superb 'keeping had kept the score down to only 2 – 0 at half time when it could easily have been 5 – 0 by then.)

The other three goals were all superbly made and superbly taken headers that flashed into the net – very “English”, as Bilic, the Croatian manager, might have said. Cue ecstatic celebration. To be fair to Bilic he later admitted his team had been humiliated and destroyed.

Whenever someone asks me which team I support I have to admit I don't really 'support' any team. What I do is watch with interest, and hope to enjoy some brilliant action – thoughtful, disciplined and passionate teamwork, great skills, effective defending, dynamic attacking and brilliant goalscoring. I hope to see the game well played, with lots of goals, and victory going to whichever team deserves to win.

I know people who are passionate supporters of a particular team – certain Millwall supporters for example – who don't give a shit about the quality of the football or the justice of the result. Winning is all that matters, no matter how badly the game is played, no matter how dire the football. It's 'my team right or wrong', which is pretty much the way they play the game of life. Within their own little world, their family and their mates can do absolutely NO wrong, and they'll support them and fight for them no matter what, against all comers if necessary.

Sadly such people often only get really excited in life when they're seeing their team win a match, or when they're having a fight or a 'bundle' on 'behalf' of their team or their mates. They might admit to themselves that their team deserved to lose, and they might mention it to their mates down the pub, but they'd never let on to an 'outsider'.

Thankfully, though, there are many more people who have a sense of 'fair play', and who will even feel some odd little sense of satisfaction when their team loses a match, on the basis that the useless f****** b*******'s deserve to be beaten up and defeated. Lots of English people don't like winning if it's a result of cheating or unfair tactics, and lots of us don't even like winning if the victory is undeserved.

But even those of us who are the least partisan and the least nationalistic feel some sort of emotional attachment to our national and our city or town teams, and we get enormous amounts of enjoyment when 'our lads' do their jobs as well as they did them last night.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/sep/09/world-cup-qualifier-england-croatia

It's the women's turn this afternoon – 5.00pm BBC2 – England v Germany – European Nations Final.

Bafana Bafana? Crazy name, crazy guys:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_national_football_team

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PS Try to record the sounds you make (by using some mechanical or electronic means) as you read the following quotes, because I guarantee you will never laugh so much again in your entire life. If anyone ever doubts the power of words and language to affect our moods – here's the proof. Have some tissues handy to dry your eyes. Do NOT read this if you're in your office, supposedly working. But DO make a recording of your laughter the first time you read it because nothing's ever as funny the second time around.

http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Palms/6687/managers.html

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Life's Little Delights

Yesterday on the Today programme there was a discussion about what delights us in our day to day lives. Oxzen had always been a strong believer that the capacity and the ability to experience delight is a strong marker of spiritual intelligence. It's the little things . . .

Here's a description of the book called Delight that JB Priestley first published in 1949 – taken from the Amazon website -

“In the years following the Second World War, there didn't seem much to smile about, but as JB Priestley illustrated in the classic "1949 Delight", there are many joys to be found in even the simplest things. This charming book comprises a series of short essays, which all depict a simple pleasure - the smallest things in life that Priestley delighted in at that bleak time - a notion that chimes perfectly with the current national mood. Just some of the simple things Priestley enjoyed include; fountains; a walk in a pine wood; a new box of matches; Sunday papers in the country; reading in bed about foul weather; suddenly doing nothing and waking to smell bacon . . .

Priestley's sense of humor and literary flare are in evidence on every page. Each self-contained essay is a joy to read and will no doubt bring a little 'delight' to the reader - just as Priestley originally intended sixty years ago. In 'timeless mornings' Priestley muses, 'There is one kind of morning in early summer that is for me very special, the most delightful of all mornings. The sun is up and blazing somewhere but not visible yet down here, where there is a lot of gold mist about and the birds are singing from lost thickets.' The new 60th anniversary edition of "Delight" contains the full, unabridged text of over one hundred of Priestley's personal joys and pleasures.”

On the Today programme Alexei Sayle, the one and only, the wonderful, said he delights in re-reading old copies of guides to restaurants and bars that no longer exist.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Delight-J-B-Priestley/dp/1905080670

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/p/j-b-priestley/delight.htm

http://uk.tv.yahoo.com/07092009/19/paxman-brand-reveal-delights.html

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Rapport

I have a new theory that the secret of his success is the 'rapport' that Capello has developed with his players, and it's also what readers have with a writer like Priestly, or whoever their favourite authors happen to be. To have rapport with someone doesn't mean you have to like or admire that individual. You may have reservations about them as an individual, and you may even dislike some aspects of their behaviour or their ideas. But what you do have is the ability to be on their wavelength, and to be able to communicate or empathise from a basis of shared assumptions about life or about the nature of the task you're working on, or whatever.

To experience 'flow' is hard enough as an individual. For two or more people working together to experience it simultaneously whilst engaged in a particular project, or activity, or game, is almost impossible unless you have rapport. I suspect that what great coaches can do is build rapport, between themselves and others, and between other individuals.

It's a shared sense of what's right and what's wrong, what's effective and what's not, when to do something, and when not. It's part instinct, part empathy, part logic, part knowledge, part understanding, and part intuition. We need rapport that's both inner and outer, within oneself and with others. It's a coming together in three dimensions. It's harmony and resonance, like voices in a choir or strings on an instrument.

Or players on a pitch. England's play last night had a 'flow' to it. They're finally starting to play as a team whose members have a proper rapport. After years of failing to play well together, people like Lampard, Gerrard, Lennon and Rooney are beginning to 'gel' and harmonise. It's partly down to experience, and partly down to the consistent messages and sets of beliefs and understandings that a good coach or manager is able to instil. It's the fine tuning as well as the correct choice of strings, instruments or players. Without rapport and flow nothing is achieved. You can have great skills and individual flair, but without rapport you tend to go nowhere.

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Obama and his Congregation

Like a priest talking to his parishioners Barack Obama yesterday met with, and spoke to, the Congressmen and women and the Senators of the House of Representatives who may or may not be willing to vote for his health care proposals. It seems he made a great speech, or delivered a great sermon, whichever way you prefer to look at it. It seems like a great effort to establish, or re-establish, some rapport with the teams that must function properly together if anything is going to be achieved, and if the country is to make any progress towards becoming more civilised and properly democratic. The country voted for change. Will it be allowed to have it?

30 million Americans can't even get health insurance, let alone are able to afford it. 46 million of them have no health insurance whatsoever.

Check out clips of his speech here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/10/barack-obama-healthcare-address

“We did not come here to fear the future. We came here to shape it.”

Full text of the speech here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/10/barack-obama-healthcare-reform-speech-full-text

Michael Tomasky's blog on the speech:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2009/sep/10/barack-obama-healthcare-big-speech

Tons of comments on it already.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
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Other Random Musings

Abdullah Abdullah

In case you haven't been paying attention, this is the name of the hapless guy who lost out in this week's election for the presidency of Afghanistan. How lucky is he! However, he's now complaining that the vote, and the count, were fixed. Some people just don't know when to shut the fuck up and just be grateful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_Abdullah

I'm always fascinated by these guys with double names, like Boutros Boutros-Ghali – people so good they name them twice. Imagine Obama Obama, or Barack Barack. Which would it be?

Brown Brown. Cameron Cameron.

I remember Billy Connelly once making a comment about posh people in Scotland having surnames as first names. Like Cameron.

This naming business is really bizarre. What happens to people, that they want to actually change their names? The most famous examples are when people change their religions, or suddenly adopt a religion. On the other hand, why should we stayed lumbered with names we don't like?

Oxzen Oxzen. Definitely a ring to it.

John Cooper Clark

I  think I wrote about JCC some time ago, and yesterday I came across a poem of his on Spotify that you should listen to if you ever get so angry with someone you want to beat them up and call them a twat. It's called Twat. Just type Twat in the Spotify search box.

http://www.cyberspike.com/clarke/twat.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS5QMT-JUt4

Dion, Dion

I know I've mentioned Dion before, but I'm going to put in another plug for King of the New York Streets because I think it's possibly the best anti-drug song ever written. It's not didactic – it just sets out what it feels like to be someone living a coke-fuelled life, thinking he's the boss and the head honcho of his neighbourhood, or whatever, and ends with a blank statement - “This attitude comes from cocaine lies ”- the delusions of that particular drug. The refrain goes, “I was only sixteen years, so what could I have known . . . . ?”

The very best thing about the track is that it ROCKS. You want to listen to it on account of the great rhythm and the driving groove, plus the great vocals. Catch it on Spotify and YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMYT3DoMOPU Steve Cropper's wearing the same sweater he wore on the Booker T/Green Onions video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOCW8brdBaE&feature=related

The lyrics are hard to find on the Internet, but you can see them here:
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/05/layer-156-musical-interlude-vision-for.html

http://johnnyyen.blogspot.com/2009/05/dion-king-of-new-york-streets.html

http://www.diondimucci.com/main.html
http://www.diondimucci.com/king_albums/dm_notes.html – a great piece of rock n roll writing by Dave Marsh. Read it at your leisure.

Dave Marsh

Here's another great example of his writing – about Springsteen:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sLJZ84jaxhsC&pg=PA518&lpg=PA518&dq=%22dave+marsh%22+%2B+dion&source=bl&ots=gimIMO0Xpd&sig=xdH7E24gFbIwsLfxpQfgWSvFRA4&hl=en&ei=2OqoStDUEOaZjAf22-GCCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#v=onepage&q=&f=false

“Marsh is also a member of the National Advisory Board of PROTECT: The National Association to Protect Children.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Marsh

http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/dmarsh_1001.htm   -  The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made.

This man has TASTE! Feel the rapport.
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Layer 161 Human Groups

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Yesterday's Monaco GP was won by Jensen Button driving a Brawn. Crazy names, crazy guys.

Actually I was pleased for Jensen. For several seasons now, for reasons I don't understand, and in spite of being very obviously a hugely talented guy, he's driven uncompetitive cars and has struggled to even finish races, let alone win them. Suddenly he's won 5 out of the 6 opening races this season, which is phenomenal by any standards. The real measure of his talent is his ability to avoid mistakes and to consistently out-perform his team mate who's driving identical machinery - who also happens to be a guy who drove for Ferrari for several seasons, so he's clearly no mug.

Jensen's a genuinely pleasant and engaging individual – intelligent, calm, reflective, modest and level-headed. Everything that any of us should aspire to be. Frustration and failure, through no fault of his own, have clearly had their benefits in terms of his spiritual and emotional intelligence.

The same positive things can be said about Martin Brundle, who commentates on the sport, and Lewis Hamilton, the current world champion. These are three guys from fairly modest backgrounds, by Monte Carlo standards, working and living in a world of rampant egos, who make you feel that Englishness is OK after all.

On the other hand there's Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosely – two very old and wizened guys who represent all that's nasty and unsympathetic about these strange islands. Two phenomenally rich guys who are ruthless, competitive, aggressive and highly devious. Laws unto themselves. Highly intelligent, and highly able - in terms of their ability to manage, manipulate and control people and money – but so what? You don't get to be in their positions with their sort of wealth unless you have those qualities and those sorts of egos. Not unless you've very lucky. They certainly don't seem to have any other talents or skills, other than those you need for leadership and domination in a highly competitive business environment, which is all the Grand Prix circus effectively is these days.

--------------------------------------------

The guy who cuts my hair was in a chatty mood yesterday. I was his final client of the day, and his place was empty apart from the two of us. We had a coffee in the 'garden', in glorious late Spring sunshine, and he rambled on about his recent trip to Australia to see his son and daughter in law, and his grandson. He's very people oriented. He talks only about people. I've no idea what he made of Australia.

He lives in the northern outskirts of London, the Home Counties, and commutes to his business in his Porsche roadster - a present to himself for having survived parenthood and marriage. He's still having problems with the new woman in his life, and seems to have decided to call it a day. Or maybe she has. The final straw seems to have been when he failed to be sufficiently chatty with her sister and her sister's partner at a dinner party.

It probably wasn't what you'd call a match made in heaven, though, no matter how much he helped her with her horses, or she helped him with his business.

------------------------------------------

There are people who like to listen to other people's stories, and there are people who like to tell stories. There are people who like to do both, and there are people who like to do neither.

My barber reckons he's a people person. He's highly sensitive to other people, in the sense that he has a very sharp sensitivity to how people are reacting to him, and what impression he's making.

On the other hand, he's useless at tuning in to other people's internal moods and feelings, and in fact has no real interest in what other people are feeling – whether they're up, down or sideways. I guess to him that sort of empathy is a waste of time. The only thing that matters is whether or not people are responding positively to him, whether they like him, and whether they currently enjoy his company. He's a pleasant guy, but suffers from a strange mixture of insecurity and egocentricity.

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As far as I'm aware, dinner parties are things that happen between consenting middle class people in the privacy of their own homes. They seem to involve mainly either young 'professionals' who've yet to start families, or older people whose kids are off their hands. Though there are some people who have kids and who seem to put them to bed before the guests arrive, or take them to the 'party' and hope they'll go to sleep in a carry basket or spare bed somewhere. Others just get baby sitters.

I'm not even sure that the more discerning elements of the middle classes call these things dinner parties any more. In order to establish that they are indeed the more discerning elements, and to differentiate themselves from the petite bourgeoisie, they seem more likely to say “Would you like to come to dinner?”, rather than, “We're having a dinner party”. Followed by, “Frederika and Justin, Lizzy and Edward are also coming”.

Dinner parties are like a kind of group sex, but without the sex. The intercourse consists of everybody looking at everybody else, sizing them up, deciding just when to pull out their party pieces, their best bits, their anecdotes, and their simply hilarious stories of their latest encounters with life and humanity, and then sticking them in. The verbal replaces the physical. Everyone eats too much, gets tipsy, and has a simply marvellous time. Or not.

The competition to establish who's the one with the highest status, the most wealthy, the best travelled, the greatest wit, etc, can be quite intense if you get a group of experienced party-goers together and in the right (or wrong) mood. Things can turn quite nasty between those who don't 'hit it off'.

And heaven help you if you don't actually take part in the fun and games. Nobody likes a guest who doesn't throw into the 'conversation' something entertaining or some sort of anecdote. Mind you, the best bits probably happen before the pudding arrives, by which time people have generally run out of steam and are content to sit back and discuss property prices, the credit crunch and holiday plans.

-------------------------------------------------

On the other hand, I've always enjoyed outdoor lunches where three or four generations get together round a big table on a sunny day. Such occasions are fairly infrequent in our climate, but when they do happen they can be brilliant. Before and after eating, the kids scamper around, after getting over their initial shyness, and entertain the adults with their natural sense of fun and excitement. The oldies can sit back and be waited upon by their more energetic offspring, who will hopefully wash up afterwards as well. The retired folk can enjoy hearing what the others have been doing with their lives, and also enjoy chatting to the grandchildren. Just sitting in the sun is in itself enjoyable, for most of us.

Most of all, since there is continuity and love in the lives of old friends and their relatives, there's unlikely to be any sense of insecurity and or competition between those present. No-one need say anything, or feel obliged to contribute anything. And if anyone does say anything untoward you can always tell them to piss off, since they're family.

Last week I had the pleasure of eating lunch whilst listening to a young man, the partner of a friend's daughter, talking about his interest in philosophy, which he studied as an undergraduate, and his thesis, which was on the I Ching. How brilliant is that! I've always, since my early twenties at any rate, been interested in The Book of Changes, and the wisdom it contains. Whether or not you use it as an aid to meditation and a means of reflection on life's problems, it's a book that embodies the essence of Taoist thinking and philosophy, which has always appealed to me.

As it happens, the young man in question is of Chinese (?) extraction, though he grew up in Richmond on Thames. (What a brilliant name that is – literally, Riche-Monde.) It's so rare that I meet young people who have any interest in philosophy or anything metaphysical, and also a delightful sense of humour. It's a real treat to spend time with such people. His partner, my friend's daughter, who's an artist and highly creative, and whom I've known since she was about 14, is similarly lovely – humorous, clever and modest, with a real sense of the absurd and a real love of living life very simply and unpretentiously.

--------------------------------------------------------

Mind you, it's possible to overdo that kind of thing. I've heard of people who go not just en famille but as a tribe on holiday, with a huge group of friends and relatives who meet up year after year in the same spot. I know other people who cluster together en masse every Christmas with extended family and friends for nearly a week.

I can see how it must be wonderful, on the whole, for all of the generations; but for myself I think I'd suffer quite a lot if I was constantly feeling obliged to take part in things prearranged by others, instead of being able to do my own thing and go my own way. It's sometimes very difficult to live up to the expectations of others, and I need my quiet times, my retreats, my meditations, my reading time, my writing time, my music time and my selfishly alone time.

Getting together with a group once or twice a week for an al fresco lunch is probably about perfect for me.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Last night's party, for a friend's 50th birthday, was another matter entirely. It didn't help that it took place in the upstairs room of a pub in the demi-monde of East Dulwich. But when the pub charges £3.80 for a small bottle of Budvar, then that's just taking the piss.

The live band was frankly awful – untalented local musicians churning out hopeless middle of the road easy-listening (!) so-called rock. Pap. Badly judged pieces as well – for example playing “Dolphins” at a birthday bash: “This world may never change / The way it's been / And all the ways of war / Won't change it back again
I'm not one to tell / This world how to get along / I only know that peace will come / When all our hate is gone."

Rubbish. Angsty, simplistic nonsense. I bet dolphins hate that song.

"I've been searching / For the dolphins in the sea / And sometimes I wonder / Do you ever think of me?"

Rubbish. Happy Birthday.

I was hoping that in the break there would at least be some decent tracks played from CD, but not a chance. More dire background sludge. Surprising really, because my friend really has good taste in music. With so much brilliant music in the world, how come people still manage to choose endless garbage?

A roomful of middle-class South London 'professionals', mainly in their forties and fifties, was quite something as well. As dull a bunch of people as you could ever meet. All of them absolutely lovely people individually, of course – all of them doing worthwhile things in the public services and the arts, and so on. But nobody with an aura that spoke of individuality, originality, optimism, vitality or vibrancy. Apart from my friend, who 's lovely.

And I'm very sorry, but middle-class middle-aged South London professionals with middle class genes in their blood simply have no idea how to dance. Not unless they genuinely have soul, and have a feel for music and rhythm. They just shouldn't do it, except in the privacy of their own homes. Especially when the live band has no sense of rhythm and doesn't swing either.
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Layer 38 License To Kill

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Bob Dylan - Infidels

License To Kill

Man thinks 'cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please
And if things don't change soon, he will.
Oh, man has invented his doom,
First step was touching the moon.

Now, there's a woman on my block,
She just sit there as the night grows still.
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?

Now, they take him and they teach him and they groom him for life
And they set him on a path where he's bound to get ill,
Then they bury him with stars,
Sell his body like they do used cars.

Now, there's a woman on my block,
She just sit there facin' the hill.
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?

Now, he's hell-bent for destruction, he's afraid and confused,
And his brain has been mismanaged with great skill.
All he believes are his eyes
And his eyes, they just tell him lies.

But there's a woman on my block,
Sitting there in a cold chill.
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?

Ya may be a noisemaker, spirit maker,
Heartbreaker, backbreaker,
Leave no stone unturned.
May be an actor in a plot,
That might be all that you got
'Til your error you clearly learn.

Now he worships at an altar of a stagnant pool
And when he sees his reflection, he's fulfilled.
Oh, man is opposed to fair play,
He wants it all and he wants it his way.

Now, there's a woman on my block,
She just sit there as the night grows still.
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?


Violence 1

Do soldiers have a license to kill?

“Waltz With Bashir” is “a daring new animated documentary that follows Israeli director Ari Folman as he tries to piece together memories of the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps“.

It’s in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Folman was on the radio this morning explaining how he intends to do everything he can to persuade his sons never to take part in any violence whatsoever, regardless of any demands that the State or the Army may make of them. He wants his work to persuade everyone that violence can never be a solution to conflict.

“Folman was a soldier in the Israeli army when it invaded Lebanon earlier that year. It allowed Christian militiamen into the refugee camps and stood by as they went on a killing spree shortly after the assassination of their leader, Bashir Gemayel.”

Well there’s still hope for the Middle East, and for the world, when artists like Folman are able to release powerful films that highlight State and military atrocities, and make the case for shunning violent solutions to problems in all circumstances.


Violence 2

Bob sings, “Oh, man is opposed to fair play,
He wants it all and he wants it his way.”
(License To Kill)

Well this now clearly includes girls and women, as we know it always has, though maybe to a smaller degree.

This week we’ve been hearing news reports that more and more girls are behaving aggressively and violently, and being generally anti-social. Factors are assumed to be alcohol, our ‘pushy, acquisitive age‘, an ‘economy driven by competition’, and an attitude that’s usually described as ‘laddish’, which presumably means being loud, crude, cocky, rude, insensitive, threatening, gangsterish, binge-drinking, insulting, bragging, attention-seeking, inconsiderate, lacking self-control, over-sexed and generally disgusting.

Clearly what we’re dealing with here are girls who completely lack emotional, social and spiritual intelligence, and we need to ask ourselves why. It’s not hard to see that there are issues about role models, cultural influences, values, greed, sensation-seeking, etc.

And still our education system does nothing to provide for the real developmental needs of these young people, which are to do with substantial amounts of time to consider themselves and others objectively, philosophically and psychologically; to learn something about desirable human values; to learn techniques of self-restraint and self-control; to learn how to relate in positive ways to others, including those outside of the immediate peer group, etc.

None of the above work and learning is really happening, and where it is timetabled in schools it isn’t done well, and it generally isn’t taken seriously, either by the kids or the teachers, and especially the kids who are most in need of it. Neither are schools offering one to one and small group counseling sessions, or opportunities to explore kids’ levels and aspects of EQ and SQ with sympathetic adults. It’s not in the National Curriculum, you see. Kids often have to actually get themselves permanently excluded from mainstream schools before they can access some of the good things and the good teachers that may be on offer in Special Schools. How mad is that?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/16/ukcrime.gender

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/15/ukcrime.youthjustice1

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Here’s another stanza of Bob’s to think about, from another track from Infidels, a track called “I and I”.

Took an untrodden path once, where the swift don't win the race,
It goes to the worthy, who can divine the word of truth.
Took a stranger to teach me, to look into justice's beautiful face
And to see an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

Note the words “worthy”, “truth”, and “divine” - which are favourite words of mine.

As in

“And think not that you can direct the course of love,
for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.”

It’s always good to re-read “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran from time to time.

http://leb.net/gibran/works/prophet/prophet.html
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5484/Gibran.htm

Collins defines “divine” as:

“To perceive or understand (something) by intuition or insight” (spiritual intelligence) and
“To discern (a hidden or future reality) as though by supernatural power”.

The whole notion of hidden realities I find very interesting. This is fertile territory for reflection and meditation. As is the whole realm of the spiritual, the metaphysical, the supernatural, if you like. This is indeed the realm of intuition and insight. Looking within, not without.

We must train ourselves to let insight pierce and illuminate the dark areas, where logic, reason and the senses cannot penetrate, since our knowledge is always so limited and so open to interpretation, since our senses often fail to make sense of what’s around us, since reason is often based on false premises.

We need these things on the school curriculum.

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Another song to check out on Infidels is “Man Of Peace”.

http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/peace.html

http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/license.html

http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/iandi.html
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Layer 36 Man in a Long Black Coat

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For all its cares and woes, life is still full of awe and wonder. For instance, music continues to amaze me. Whenever I hear some brilliant new music, especially when it’s by a genius like Bob Dylan, I’m transported to new peaks of pleasure and enjoyment, and something like spiritual bliss.

This morning I saw Macca, of all people, being interviewed on an Open University programme and talking about how for him music was always about discovery, and how much he’s always enjoyed discovering news things when he sits at a piano - new sounds, new chords, new melodies, whatever.

He’s 60+ and still has a childlike joy in discovery and invention. What a pity that our children for the most part do not - especially those who need it the most in order to bring joy into their lives, but go to school only to face drills, rote learning, tests, and so-called ‘catch-up programmes’, all of which leave no time for voyages of discovery and invention, even if they should be fortunate enough to have teachers who see the need for such things in the first place.

The more I think about what Ashley Walters was talking about on the radio yesterday, the more angry I get. “A lot of our kids are bright, talented, artistic. But they’re not given opportunities to grow and use their talents . . .” And he should know. There’s a guy who had no issues with literacy - he loved books, reading and writing. Yet he was still denied the opportunity to develop as a talented artist by his school, though he was fortunate enough to have a parent who saw the need to arrange special classes for him outside of ‘school’ hours. Most parents do not.

I had two different friends talk to me yesterday about the news regarding the House of Commons Select Committee report on testing in schools, one of whom was talking to me on Skype from Namibia! Good news travels fast, eh?. They both expressed hope and optimism that the report would cause the government to scrap SATs and put in place a more enlightened system.

I’m afraid I dampened their enthusiasm by saying that I can’t bring myself to believe that the current consensus, mind-set, conspiracy, dogma, hegemony, call it what you will, is going to collapse because of a puff of wind from a Select Committee, whose seeking after truth is not valued by the big boys and girls who seek only to perpetuate their own position and power, and pay far more attention to the editorials of the right-wing press and its owners, and can hardly be expected to recant all they’ve been doing and admit they’ve been idiots and have pursued policies that are anti-child and anti-education (as more enlightened people know it).
I also suggested that an incoming Tory administration is also very unlikely to show more enlightenment. Since when has Conservatism been about enlightenment and doing things in the true interests of the working classes and underclasses?

No - the best we can hope for is that in about 10 years time some sort of coalition of the enlightened finally comes to power, though I’m not holding my breath for that either. After all, this is the country that has a history of successful counter-revolutions against any progressive or radical movements that managed to make political headway - be they peasants and Levelers, Roundheads, anti-monarchists, anti-Tory, social democratic, Europhile and Eurocentric, educationalists, etc. We’re not still a monarchy for nothing. We’re not still on the fringes of the European Union for nothing. We don’t have a ‘special relationship’ with the USA for nothing. We’re not a world centre of business and finance for nothing, either.

Frankly our education system has never set out to encourage free-thinking, progressive, radical criticism of the status quo. No-one in government has ever set the education system the task of producing emotionally literate, creative and enlightened thinkers who will challenge the status quo and drag the country into an era of social justice, peace and prosperity for all.

No - what they want is for more kids to get exam passes and prepare themselves for ‘the world of work’, as if passing so-called academic tests actually does that anyway, as any enlightened business person or industrialist well knows - and that is not an oxymoron. Such people do exist.

Our political masters, however, can see no further than the utilitarian view of education - and according to them our schools are there to serve the university system and to regulate who has access to that system, and thereafter access to the professions, and to careers in business, the senior civil service, etc. Gatekeeping - sorting sheep from goats.

Skilling people to become productive units and to earn money is the name of the game, not enabling people to find a voice, to develop creative thinking skills, to see the rat race for what it is. ‘Education, more than wealth or power, is the key to human dignity.’ Wise words. Regrettably our education system isn’t designed to enable young people to discover human dignity, and only provides for the academically able to pursue real wealth and power.

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So what’s all this to do with a man in a long, black coat?, I hear you ask. As well you might, dear reader. Well yesterday my good friend N came round and turned me on to two Bob Dylan albums that have passed me by over the years - Infidels and Oh Mercy. I apologise to His Bobness for my slackness. I must have had my mind on other things.

It was N who’d managed to get me a ticket to see Bob at Wembley last year. When we were in the Caribbean N had played me Jokerman, the opening track on Infidels, which blew me away with its driving rhythms and lyrical & melodic genius.

Oh Mercy kicks off with ‘Political World’, which rocks and rolls as well as anything has ever done in the history of blues and rock. “We live in a political world / under the microscope / you can travel anywhere / and hang yourself there / you’ve always got more than enough rope.” Indeed we have.

Take a look at the rest of the lyrics: http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/political.html

The whole album is a melodic masterpiece, with superb musicianship, incredible writing, great basslines, brilliant harmonica solos, and so on. Dylan sings as well as, if not better than, ever.

And so to The Man with the Long Black Coat. The song begins with chirping crickets, slow, echoing guitars, and suddenly, thirty seconds into it, a tapping foot (one two three, one two three,) and a piercing blast of slow, spine-tingling harmonica blues, followed by and accompanied by a low-slung bass - a single note per bar - dom . ., dom . ., dom . . . It sounds like doom, though it might be liberation. The guitars seem to gently and melodically speak of hope, but the harp wails out notes of heart-breaking sadness. “People don’t live or die / people just float / she went with the man with the long, black coat.”

http://www.bobdylanonline.com/songs/coat.html

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Margaret Mizen, mother of Steven Mizen, a South London 15 year old who was stabbed to death this week, was quoted on the radio today. “Anger killed my son. There’s too much anger in the world. My prayers are with my son’s killers and their families.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/05/13/do1302.xml

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1949676/Bakery-murder-Mother-speaks-of-Jimmy-Mizen

The speaker on today‘s ‘Thought For Today’, the Reverend Roy Jenkins, spoke about angry and resentful young (and old) people who awake every day to yet another day of being treated unfairly. He spoke about millions of people who are affected by global hunger and poverty, every day of their lives. He spoke of powerful people who exploit the poor. He spoke of a need for us to engage with ‘creative anger‘.

Such an engagement is what I’d prefer to call creative channeling of one’s passions. Passion for life and for social justice. Passion for creating more joy and more enlightenment. Passion for global brotherhood and sisterhood. First we need to see things as they really are, and see clearly where the solutions might lie, and then we can begin to create a movement for peaceful change throughout our societies and the world at large.

In the words of Ashley Walters (yesterday’s blog), you can’t fight fire with fire. But we can all take a peaceful stand and insist on running the world more justly and fairly. We can all band together and stand up for human values, a more spiritual world, and an education system that will over the long term create more emotionally and spiritually intelligent people and a more enlightened world.

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I’d really thought we’d heard the last of the public schoolboy tones of Tone on the radio. I can’t stand hearing Blair speak - on any subject. To hear him talking about Middle East peace is painful indeed.

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Postscript

Trawling the net for the lyrics to Man In The Long Black Coat I came across a beautifully written San Franciscan blog that includes some excellent pieces on the Hurricane Katrina disaster and on the 40th anniversary of the killing of Martin Luther King. Enjoy them at

http://dontcallmeishmael.blogspot.com/2006/08/man-in-long-black-coat.html